


Traitor is a Strong word.

by epitomizedTyrant



Category: RWBY
Genre: AU, Canon Divergent from Trailer: Red, Maiden Powers are Individualized, Police Brutality, Ruby Rose is a Faunas (Maybe?), Smol Ruby Rose talks to quite possibly the worst person possible about morality and inequality, Thats a wild tag huh, Villain Ruby Rose, lots of au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-03-03 19:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13348155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epitomizedTyrant/pseuds/epitomizedTyrant
Summary: It implies that the traitor was ever on your side.Or,Ruby: A case study in how talking to strangers is a really good idea, even if they are wearing awesome evil capes. No, wait... especially if they are wearing evil capes.





	1. Prologue

Your name is Cinder Fall and you find the island of Patch a peaceful place to come and rest, occasionally. You even wore a cape today, you felt so relaxed. You sit at an outside table at the best coffeeshop in town.

You notice a presence and glance down. A little girl in a redress is looking at you bashfully. She has silver eyes, and you feel like that’s important for some reason.

“I like your cape.” She mumbles at you. You feel warm and fuzzy inside. Its bizarre.

“Thank you.” You say back to her. “Who are you?”

“Im Ruby Rose!” She smiles.

“Hello Ruby, my name is Cinder.”

“Im going to be a huntress! Ill be like the heroes in the stories!” Ruby beams at you, unprompted.

“Why?” You used to share the same dream.

“So I can help people!” Ruby explains, proudly.

You could tell the child that it’s a wonderful dream and she should go back to her parents now. But you are Cinder Fall, and not long from now you will be a monster.

“Why? What makes them deserve your help?” You ask, a bit harsher than you mean to.

“Because… I will be strong, and they need it? Everyone deserves help! Right?” She looks doubtful now. Poor child.

“Hmph. It is a tragedy that the world forces children to pick up blades and protect people out of nothing but kindness and goodwill while those in power stand by and watch.”

“But huntsman are powe-”

“Huntsmen are pawns.” You interrupt her mid-word. She seems to stagger back. “Do you want to be a pawn?”

She doesn’t even hesitate, she just shakes her head. Good she knows chess, you like chess metaphors.

“There will always be pawns. I’m a Queen powerful, but still, I am answering to someone.” You hate it, but accept it.

“But, if I don’t become a huntress, what would I do?” the child asks.

“Oh, do become a huntress. I have no doubt you will make a fine one. But you shouldn’t do it to save the world, you should do it to make yourself as strong and as smart as you can. Physical strength isn’t everything, hell its not even important to someone smart enough. But, little Rose, the world seems to be made of the strong and the smart, but there are some who can be both. You may as well try, hm?”

She stands there, hands fiddling in front of her chest, head turned down. Thinking.

“If you want to know more about my worldview, you can come back here at this time any day, I’m on a little bit of a vacation. Now shoo, your family is probably wondering where you are.”

And you thought that would be that. You would never see the little huntress again and she would go to be some great hero.

The next evening as you sit drinking an identical cup of tea on a slightly breezier day, you are surprised when the girl returns. She looks bashful and a little confused, like she isn’t quite sure why she is here.

You are about to greet her when she looks at you, and solemnly asks “Why don’t you think people deserve help?”

You stop. You grind out the next sentence, the fire dust in you gown reacting slightly to your emotional state and glowing like tired embers. “I used to. But then I helped someone, and they hurt me. And then the people I thought were my friends blamed me for getting hurt. I didn’t deserve it. No one deserves anything Ruby. The only things anyone gets are what they take with power, or are given by someone with power.”

“But… my family gives me stuff all the time, like food and bullets and a house! And they are just normal people!”

“But they have power over you. You obey them, and if you don’t, you are punished somehow, yes? Because they want ‘what’s best for you’ I’m sure.”

She’s still sitting there. Even after your bitterness washed over her, she’s still thinking. “Im sorry you were hurt.” She says, quietly.

“It wasn’t your fault. Besides. Everyone get hurt, betrayed, lied to and used. It is the way of things. Even the most powerful.”

The two of you spend the rest of that day talking about coffee and at the end she tells you that three days ago she was admitted to Signal academy a year early and was telling everyone she could. You tell her its good to be proud sometimes.

The next evening she asks you how to become powerful. You tell her to train her body and mind. You tell her that knowledge is power, and controlling who has what information is the ultimate expression of power. You tell her being able to act unseen, unheard, and unhindered is power. At the end you realize she was taking notes. What a strange girl.

The next evening you tell her something she really latches on to. You hear her whisper it to herself once or twice. You don’t know why, you don’t understand this little girl, but something about ‘There are no good deeds or evil deeds, just things people do good or evil intent.’

The next day you talk about literature and clichés. You recommend her some books that you genuinely think she will like. That they are commentaries on morality, power inequality, and one or two are unabashed villain protagonists is coincidence.

You don’t see her again until the last week of your vacation, which saddens you a little but you aren’t angry. It is a bit strange for such a young child to talk to someone like you so often. You just make small talk that day. You say your goodbyes, ones you expect to be final, and she thanks you profusely for talking to her so much. You thank her for listening. It was very validating for you, to get all that off your chest. No one ever asked you why you did the things you do before.

And then, as she walks away, she says something to you that both fills you with pride and makes your blood run with ice. “I don’t know if you are right or wrong about what people deserve. I think I still am gonna be a huntress too. But no matter what, I’m gonna be powerful. No matter what.”

 

Seven years later you have a new employer who is going to change the world, a lot of henchmen, and a much colder heart. And you find yourself standing in front of a jail cell holding a girl with silver eyes that are full of betrayal, rage, sadness, and confusion, and for once none of those emotions are because of you.


	2. Prologue Part 2

Your name is Ruby Rose, and when you are twelve you’ve already enrolled in Signal. You are the best student, and you don’t have many friends, but that’s okay because every day you are getting stronger, and smarter, and sneakier! Just yesterday you tricked Dad into letting you have a whole box of cookies! And you were able to steal a beautiful green stone right off of some woman’s hand when she was being mean to Yang!

When you are strong enough no one will ever be mean to your sis again!

 

Your name is Ruby Rose, and when you are thirteen Yang doesn’t want to talk to you anymore. You pretend like you aren’t stronger than her now, but you think you let it slip once or twice. You built a new gun yesterday, its simple, far, far simpler than your beloved crescent rose, but it will never jam, malfunction, or anything. It fires a heavy shell ideal for cutting through aura and grimm with precision. You don’t know quite why you made it.

Yang has a lot of friends. Sometimes you wish you had one.

 

Your name is Ruby Rose and by the time you turn fourteen you no longer apply yourself to your studies. They aren’t a challenge, you let your grades slip, you have better things to do. You spend long nights out in the woods hunting the grimm that roam Patch. You read and read and read about everything from military history to aura manipulation techniques. You experiment.

You are starting to get bored.

Some boy pulled on Yang’s hair today. You think he may wake up bald and bound. Just to make a point. Further, you would make sure to spread a rumor on his “Day off” that he had a baldness gene in his family. It was like she said, whoever controls the information has power… what else had she been right about?

 

Your name is Ruby Rose and when you turn fifteen you’re afraid that your family hates you. You don’t know what you did, but they are all acting differently around you now. Yang hasn’t wanted to hang out for years, so its no surprise that she’s avoiding you, but now Qrow is home more rarely and Tai looks at you like you aren’t even his daughter anymore. You wear hoodies and simple black skirts now. Your boots are quieter, your socks are simple, or sometimes a form of camouflage. You have a pair of refitting kits for Crescent Rose now, one for weaker silent shots and one for even more firepower. To escape thinking about your family and lack of friends you began an intense aura training regimen, and started doing more research.

 

Your name is Ruby Rose, and when you are fifteen you run into a man in a white suit with orange hair, and try to protect a little old man in a little old dust shop. Unfortunately the police think you are a faunas and arrest you for collusion. When you arrive at the police station battered and bruised more from the cops than the fight you find out something about your family. When Tai and Yang show up they don’t believe you. There has never been a moment more devastating. You recoil, you start to cry, you go back to your cell and refuse to talk to them, they don’t realize the mistakes made on that night, and they wont for months. When they do, Yang will come back from Beacon, Tai will cry with you on the couch, and you will meet Yangs team who follow because they are worried. You are happy for her, but you wish she hadn’t introduced you to them, or more importantly to Pyrrha’s team a short time later.

You wish you had never met them because life would have been easy and simple. Because when you were alone and ultimately lost in that cell you looked up, to a visitor. When your family had been forced to leave, and before you were processed there was an hour where no one watched you, and the security cameras had a mysterious glitch. Cinder Fall. She gave you something to hold on to.

 

 

Your name is Illia Amitola, and one day after Ruby Rose’s arrest, you watched as the abusive son of a bitch who hurt the girl you crush on disappear into the evening fog behind you. You and Blake stand on the precipice of something new in your lives. She was going to make a difference, and you were going to be right there beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor edit to the final line of this chapter, naming the view point and shifting the timeline rather significantly.


	3. Losing Touch

                Cinder Fall didn’t have strong emotions often, apart from annoyance and rage of course. So the thumping warmth that faded in and out of her chest as she observed the young girl in black and red before her were strange. Not new, but unfamiliar and forgotten. “Ruby Rose. What a shame it is to see you here.”

                She looked up. Cinder suppressed a flinch at the mean bruise on her face. Bastard police and their aura suppressing cuffs. “Now how did Roman manage to put that on you?” She said in a controlled voice. She wasn’t angry at the orange haired man, they had been enemies after all, but that didn’t stop him from standing a little more professionally behind her.

                Ruby glared at her, or perhaps over her shoulder at Torchwick, before growling a pained; “He didn’t.”

                “Ah. I should have known. Would you like me to kill the ones that did this to you? Did they do anything worse than bruise your face? And perhaps ego?”

                Ruby didn’t answer for a moment, then she sagged. “Cracked a couple ribs. Ill be fine as soon as they let me out of these cuffs.” She went back to nearly growling. “Kept me over for confirmation even though Goodwitch finally told them I was on their side. Keep calling me a dirty animal cause they saw my teeth.”

                “Shameful world we live in isn’t it. Why did you try and stop Torchwick? To protect the old man? Uphold the law?” Cinder leaned against the bars with her arms crossed, eyeing Ruby meaningfully.

                “I don’t know. I… It was the right thing.” She mumbled.

                “Right for who? The old man? Who cares about him. Right for society? The law? They put you in this cell after attacking you for doing the right thing. For being good. Because your teeth look a little different. Because they hate you for who you are, your genetics. For no reason at all. They don’t deserve you.”

                Ruby shifted. Shaking her head gently, but not disagreeing verbally. Good. Society hadn’t yet crushed her nature into some kind of heroic mold. She was still that truth-seeking child Cinder had met all those years ago. Cinder could show her the truth she needed.

                “You could join us, instead of becoming a huntsmen. My boss… She has a vision for the future. A world where everyone is equal. We’re even working with the White Fang now, although admittedly the… branch that has allied itself to us is less advocacy group and more terrorist cell, but it’s a start.”

                “I… you’re criminals…” Ruby muttered.

                “So are you, at least for now… yet you are innocent. Unlike us. We do, have done, and will continue to do violent, criminal things for our own gain. Because we are strong, and the rules that society uses to bind us bore us. You are strong, but you could be stronger. We can help you get stronger, and throw off societies shackles. We can show pleasures and secrets you could never find as a huntsmen. Freedoms that would let you strike back against closed minded idiots like the police who arrested you.” Ruby looked uncomfortable. Cinder was slightly saddened her sales pitch hadn’t worked instantly, but the greatest rewards came from effort. The effort was mostly done anyway, from her conversations as a child, to the brutality of the police, Ruby was primed. “I can see you are conflicted.”

                Cinder produced a card, a simple white business card with her scroll number printed in blocky black letters. “Here. If you change your mind… call me.” Upon which note she turned on her heel, and walked out of the room. Behind her, Roman nervously bowed to Ruby and followed.

 

 

                Ruby barely noted Romans deep bow, instead transfixed by the little card. Surely joining cinder would be… wrong. Right? She read the numbers again and again. She was pulled towards a patrol car, shouting for Glynda to explain but she was leaving, chasing the criminals. Aura suppressing cuffs cut into her wrists, a knee came up into her unprotected side, a boot hit her face and she was shoved into the car. And the huntsmen hadn’t helped her. The police had called her a filthy animal, a feral, and the citizens she had fought for had looked away.

                She repeats the night in her mind until morning, cold frothing anger roiling through her in waves and then dropping to despair. “Ruby what did you do?” Yang had said. I stopped a robbery! She had said. “Yeah, so why did they arrest you?” Yang had said. She didn’t know. She told her sister and her dad she didn’t know. “Fine don’t tell us.” They said. They thought she’d done something, without hesitation. They didn’t trust her. Was it because of her teeth? Because she looked like a faunas? Or was one? Or did they just not trust her because she had been a bit of a problem child, because she didn’t have friends?

                She didn’t sob as she cried, she just let the tears fall over her slack face, leaving tracks over her bruised face. Her aura, suppressed as it was, felt so awful and wrong. The world felt awful and wrong. Muffled, and bleached of color. She wanted to vomit. And then a wave of anger hit her, and she wanted to scream. Instead she settled for a low growl. She heard scuffling in the cell next to her, but was to distracted to care about the suited goon retreating to the opposite side of his cell, and with her aura suppressed she couldn’t feel the fear radiating off of him.

                Hours passed. When two police officers approached her cell they were met with silver orbs peering out of a hood pulled low, cloaking their prisoners face in deep shadow. She was sitting in her  cell in utter silence, cold hatred leaking from the icy silver. “You have visitors before you are released.” They said gruffly.

                She put up no resisitence as they pulled her through the station. The pushed her into a room with a bright light, a table, and a single chair. She entered quietly, only vocalizing a slight growl when one of the officers jerked back her hood.

                 She sat down without complaint. Her face schooled into near expressionlessness, except for the twitches of anger that pulled her lips into a frown and her eyes into a slight squint. After a moment, the sound of footsteps echoed through the room.

                “Ruby Rose.” A silver haired man said as he entered the room from the opposite door, Glynda Goodwitch following after him with a sad lilt to her eyes. She sucked in her breath when she met Ruby’s angry eyes, knowing full well that she hadn’t had those injuries when they fought together the night before. “You have silver eyes.” He said, leaning close.

                She met his eyes defiantly, and clasped her hands tightly together. He seemed disappointed, but set down a tray of something in front of her. She kept her eyes locked to his. “Tell me, miss Rose, where did you learn… this?” He said, brandishing a tablet with security footage of the fight.

                She glanced at the footage, and then spoke, her voice harsh and tired. “I’d like to speak with a lawyer.”

                He flinched. “Miss Rose, you aren’t in an interrogation, it was clear that you acted in self defense. No one is keeping you here.”

                In response she lifted her cuffed hands above the table.

                “What the…” He muttered, before speaking calmly to the officer behind her. “Can we uncuff miss Rose, officer?”

                The blond man stepped forward and Ruby held her cuffs toward him. The key went in, and with a click her world got its color back. Her aura burst fourth crackling and popping as it super heated the air around her and ripped through her body, exhaust in the form of rose petals bursting from her in erratic puffs.

                Her pupils dilated, opening wide and tainting the world with unnatural brightness and a wicked red hue. Her eyes locked to the officer that had her cuffed. She tried to lunge, to tear out his throat with tooth or claw, but she was locked in place. Growling she tracked her eyes to a concerned Glynda Goodwitch, who was focusing on holding her still with her riding crop extended. Ruby pushed her aura into her semblance, wrapping it around her and using it to multiply her strength instead of launch her through the air. The force of Glyndas semblance clashed with her own, but Ruby slowly turned, her pure manic strength overcoming even the huntresses powerful aura. The concrete beneath her feet shattered, cracks spiderwebbing their way across the floor.

                The pure power of Ruby’s sudden explosion of aura created an oppressive atmosphere that brought the policemen in that and the adjacent rooms to their knees.

                “Ruby.” The old man said softly. “You aren’t feeling yourself, here, have a cookie.” He held up a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Ruby eyed them suspiciously for a moment, and then the absurdity of it all hit her and knocked her out of the feral fight response. Her eyes slowly returned to normal, the world was right again. Her aura spread into her cheek and ribs, repairing them with an unmitigated urgency.

                “With a powerful soul like yours, having it suppressed for so long… especially with the emotions you’ve been feeling, well, frankly I’d hate to imagine what could have happened if we hadn’t been here when you were released. So, tell me miss Rose, where did you learn to do all of this?”

                She rubbed her wrists and eyed the cookies. She knew she shouldn’t take them, shouldn’t show weakness… but she was so hungry. Fine. She would answer his questions… Professor Ozpin’s questions in exchange for some cookies. “Signal.” She mumbled.

                He hummed, looking at the tablet and pretending to be confused. “I didn’t know that Signal taught such dangerous weapons, or to such a degree of skill…” He left off as he returned his eyes to her, and an empty plate. He didn’t notice the barely concealed awe on Glynda’s face.

                “My… Uncle taught me the basics of my scythe.” She said quietly. “Do you… Want something from me?”

                “I want to make you and offer miss Rose. I assume you know who I am?” Ruby nodded. “Would you like to come to my school?”

                “Beacon? I… don’t know.” Ruby was shocked at her own answer. A day ago she would have been happy to accept the offer. But. But…

                “Really? Most people would be quite honored by the opportunity.” Ozpin sat back at this answer and regarded her.

                “I just… want to go home. And be alone for a little bit. That’s all I want right now.” Ruby mumbled, the exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours really setting in as her adrenaline levels flatlined.

                “Okay. If you change your mind I have no doubt you can get in contact with me, thank you for your time, Ruby Rose. It was a pleasure meeting you, I wish it had been in a better set of circumstances.”

                “Me too, Oz… Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LIKE THE LEGENDARY PHOENIX


	4. Chapter 4

                Ruby kept coming back to one question. A damning question. What mattered? Who, mattered? The old man said nothing. Of course he said nothing. The people? What people? What did that even mean? Did she, herself, Ruby Rose, matter?

                Maybe it was the wrong question. Maybe it was unanswerable. Maybe the question was, what mattered to her? She would lay down her life to protect her family. Would they return that favor? They didn’t trust her. Cinder… Cinder offered to kill for her, though. To let her kill… But that wasn’t something good people did. Something heroes did.

                Ruby sat on top of her house, quietly turning the little white card over in her hand. Her family was out for the day. A month of quiet contemplation, odd looks from her family, and the ever wriggling worm of doubt in her stomach had worn away at her conviction. Another, simpler question ate at her. If the police were good… did she really want to be good?

                The old shopkeeper, the one who she had fought to protect, had only barely corroborated her story, in fact the only one anyone had listened to was Glynda, who had left her in custody in the first place.

                That wasn’t even looking outside of herself. If she, for a moment, looked at the world at large… The grimm were becoming more of a threat each year, the economy was constantly shifting and the rich were getting richer and everyone else was getting poorer. The treatment of faunas… of her people, maybe, was getting crueler. Vale was once a progressive kingdom, but the moment the economic boom died out everything started regressing.

                Maybe it didn’t deserve more heroes. Maybe it wasn’t about what anyone deserved anymore. Maybe it was about what Ruby wanted. Maybe it was about Ruby being treated like a person for the first time since fourth grade.

                She dialed the number. Hesitation stilled her finger above the call button. One more day. She would take one more day to decide.

                But she didn’t need one more day. She didn’t need one more hour. Ruby Rose didn’t want to be a hero anymore. She had fought for what she thought was good and it left her wanting, bruised, and outcast.

                “Hello?” A familiar, husky voice came from her scroll.

                “Hello.” She whispered back. “Its me… Its Ruby Rose. I want to talk.”

                “Well, Ruby, I’m _so_ happy to hear from you. Lets talk.” She could hear the grin in her voice.

                “I won’t hurt my family. Ill have other limits, but that’s… that’s important to me. Anything else… we’ll see.”

                “Acceptable. I don’t believe it will come to that.”

                “Whats the end goal. Whats our win condition? That’s… I need to know that to. What are you fighting for?”

                “A world in which myself and mine are on top. Tell me, miss Rose, now that you know what I fight for, what do you fight for?”

                Ruby thought. “You.” She said after a moment. “The only person who looked at me that day and saw another person. Ill fight for that.”

                “Excellent.”

 

                It was decided that Ruby would take up an apprenticeship with a weaponsmith in the city of Vale, starting just a few months before Yang was set to go to Beacon. An older faunus who supplied huntsmen level weaponry to Cinder. A large bull woman who hailed from Menagerie.

                She would move to vale, live in the faunus woman’s attic and act as her part time apprentice.

               

                “I applied for an apprenticeship in Vale. Weaponsmithing.” She said to her father.

                She packed her bags and left with little fanfare. It was a next step in her life after all, a thing repeated by children since time immemorial. It wasn’t like she was making a massive life altering decision, she was just going to work. Yang was vacationing that week with some of her friends from signal, but Tai saw her off with a tearful goodbye. He seemed proud of her. Qrow was busy, but he was told. Ruby didn’t want to know how Yang would react to her no longer wanting to be a huntress, not until it was too late.

                Too late for what? Ruby didn’t even know.

                The airship ride was quiet. The padded seats weren’t anywhere near padded enough, and someone decided that the same looping forty-two seconds of music, she counted, was adequate for a soundtrack. What was the point? Was it to make people buy access to the shitty movies? Was it just to drive her, specifically, crazy?

               

                She was ready to tear of someone’s head by the time the air ship touched down. She hauled her luggage, two suitcases and an overstuffed back pack, and beelined toward the obnoxious bowler hat the declared Torchwick. Ballsy of him. Or perhaps that confidence in moving in broad daylight was something more sinister than a criminal taking risks.

                Likely. Ruby didn’t feel like thinking about that though, the ditty in the damned ship still echoed between her ears like a tinnitus singing a song of aggravation instead of aluminum ring. After an exchange of glances the orange haired man led her to an absurd looking car, a limousine painted up in Roman’s colors.

                “You drive this. Amazing.”

                “Hey, it’s stylish.”

                “No, I respect that. You have an aesthetic and you stick to it. I respect that.”

                Ruby was sitting on bright orange died leather in a limousine, beside a criminal, on her way to meet with another criminal in order to finalize her apprenticeship with an arms dealer. For the first time since she made the call, it occurred to her that she had quite literally chosen the “evil” path in a video game.

                She never told Roman why she burst out laughing until she cried as they wound through Vale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came to a weird realization that pushed me to finish this today, after watching the trailer for volume 6.
> 
> I didn't like volume 5. I liked, maybe three episodes.
> 
> I also realized something weirder. My two favorite characters are Jaune and Ruby now. 
> 
> I have a tumblr where I do things like answer questions about fics and headcannony stuff, its here https://epitomizedtyrant.tumblr.com/
> 
> Come yell at me if you are into that kinda thing.


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